VFH Fellow and Africana Studies professor at Virginia Tech, Paula M. Seniors is writing on the lives of African American working class communist women Mae Mallory, Ethel Azalea Johnson, Audrey Seniors, and Pat Mallory of the Negroes With Guns Movement and the Monroe Defense Committee.

Her overarching question asks why they chose socialism and self-defense to promote civil rights in the United States. Her book will explore why they actively participated in the Tanzanian, Grenadian, and Nicaraguan revolutions that linked the struggle for black civil rights to international revolution.